


bad revolution

by backfire



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse, Blood and Injury, F/M, Marijuana, Post-Apocalypse, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:55:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24010171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backfire/pseuds/backfire
Summary: "This really is a whole new place. These stars, in this pattern, have never been seen before. So all the usual constellations we know aren't there anymore.""Maybe we should make new ones," Harry suggests."That's a nice thought," Allie says, stretching her hand out above both their heads, tracing random patterns against the sky. Somehow, she's moved even closer; he can feel her warmth radiating onto his skin, his hands twitching by his sides. "I wouldn't know how to make shapes from this, though. There are too many.”--The night they play Fugitive, the night of Harry Bingham’s party, the power goes out.And it doesn’t come back on.
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Comments: 28
Kudos: 113





	bad revolution

**Author's Note:**

> au from episode 2 on! hallie plus apocalyptic circumstances within the already parallel universe
> 
> kind of an exploration of this grizz quote from episode 10: "People aren't just going to wait around to starve. We'll kill each other first for the food that's there. We'll never make it to January."
> 
> featuring: non-zombie post-apocalypse, bad smells (but not The Smell), the gang i Thought we were going to get at the end of episode 2, completely inaccurate use of medical marijuana, accurate use of recreational marijuana, stargazing, sneaking around, accidental feelings, harry bingham being a wimp, allie pressman being a badass, and _"we're in the same boat, why not the same car?"_

  
_In the town where we live, the sun set today at 8:47pm. Summer solstice. Long days._

_But our nights are about to get a lot longer._

**

The height of summer rolls in, the air thick and cloying with rot. 

Everything is putrid and hot, a sickly sweetness undercutting the whole thing that makes it ten times worse, like too much cough syrup, molasses and blood coagulating and heavy.

It’s been exactly fifty days since the power went out. 

Harry keeps track on the calendar stuck to the fridge with a magnet, marking off the days in sharpie. It feels important, somehow, to be aware of the time passing, otherwise it’d all blend together too well, distinguishable only by the sun growing hotter, the smell worsening, the town getting more desolate.

It’s July 10th. Saturday.

Last week had been the fourth of July, but no one had been in a celebratory mood. 

Kelly, in an attempt to liven things up, had tried baking the roll of cookie dough they managed to swipe in the previous week’s grocery raid. It’d worked for a little while, the entire kitchen smelling like brown sugar and vanilla and chocolate. But then the oven had run too hot for too long, and the smoke detectors went off and they all, in a desperate attempt to stop the frantic and high pitched beeping, had to open every window and door on the first floor to let the smoke out. Allie was half out of her mind, convinced that others would hear the racket and come flocking to the house. Cassandra had to shake her roughly by the shoulders to get her to quiet down, the most aggressive Harry’s ever seen her act towards her sister.

The night had ended with tensions high, anxiety running thick and fast through all their veins. Afterwards, Harry had retreated to the ensuite in his bedroom so he could hyperventilate into a brown paper bag some more, wishing desperately that his mother’s supply of Xanax hadn’t run out amongst the six of them weeks ago.

It was the night they played Fugitive, the night of his party, when things had gone to shit.

Well, more shit than they were already—at least in the real world if something like this happened on such a scale, there were backup plans, emergency services, state aid, even the military if it got bad enough. Hell, they could fucking leave town if they wanted to.

But not here. There’s nowhere to go.

**

The power goes out when all the partygoers are still gathered downstairs, huddled inside the kitchen while the summer storm rages on outside, rain falling heavy and loud all around them.

When it doesn’t come back on after a while, Harry offers to let people stay for the night, possibly to curb the growing sense of dread unfurling in his stomach. With people around, he can pretend that this is normal—this is just another post-Fugitive party he’s holding, this is just a regular summer power outage, it’ll be back in a few minutes and they can turn on the music again and take shots and play beer pong.

But it doesn’t. People leave en masse, heading out into the night for the local hardware store, buzzing about flashlights and batteries. The only other person left after the crowd dissipates is Allie, still leaning next to him on the counter.

“This can’t be good,” she murmurs. He looks over at her; in the dark, he can’t make out her features, just the shadow of her hair framed in wild curls around her face, the same hair he held gingerly by the tips of his fingers not half an hour ago as they laid in his bed. Part of him is kind of glad she hadn’t gone with all the others.

When the two of them finally follow the crowd to the hardware store, things are absolute chaos. Instinctively, Harry uses his jacket to shield both of them from the rain as they run over to the familiar faces they see at the end of the strip: Cassandra, Gordie, Will, and Kelly.

The six of them stare at the pandemonium before them. A car is on fire, the flames burning bright and hot and acrid, smoke pluming high into the night sky. Glass shattering as stores are broken into with abandon. People fighting in the streets, violent and bloody.

Somehow, Harry finds himself urging the others to stay at his house until the power comes back on—safety in numbers, his parents have a backup generator that he’s forgotten about until now, they should call a truce between their “sides” while all this is going on—even Will, despite their argument the other day in the church, is included. He knows it’s an attempt to curb the dread, gnawing deep and painful in his gut now, the feeling that’s telling him things will never be the same again. That this is it: the end. 

Surprisingly, it’s Allie who agrees and convinces Cassandra and the others to join. She’s full of surprises, Allie, and not for the first time, Harry takes a moment to wonder how he’s gone all this time without really noticing someone like her around. Kelly seems to catch on, glancing between them with a look on her face that Harry knows to mean she can probably guess what happened between the two of them. She always had a sense about these things.

It’s just temporary—it’s just for now.

That’s the line that gets repeated over and over by each of them as they make their way back to Harry’s house. It’s just a stopover, somewhere they can lay low while the outage lasts, maybe even turn on the generator as a last resort.

It won’t come to that, though.

It won’t.

**

It’s gas day.

They’ve been running low for a while now, Allie checking the meter on the Generac and the tanks in the cars nervously every morning. 

“We _need_ gas,” she said just yesterday, waving her hand in front of her face as she’d come into the kitchen. Most days, they can’t smell the rot this far out at the end of the cul-de-sac where Harry’s house is, but when it’s especially hot it festers everywhere, a blanket of it lying all over town.

“We’re fine for another few days,” he’d insisted. It’d turned into an argument between the two of them, her hissing that he’s selfish, he doesn’t see the bigger picture, him throwing back that she’s reckless. Cassandra, surprisingly, had been the one to snap them out of it, a firm hand on Allie’s shoulder. She’d been looking worse for several days, pale and drawn.

“Harry’s right,” she’d said, to everyone’s surprise. “We shouldn’t go out while the weather’s like this. We can wait.”

He’d been trying to hold off another raid for as long as possible, not wanting to venture out while the weather’s bad like it has been for the past couple days. Rain makes for low visibility, makes for accidents. Mostly, he just hates going into town, but he knows he’s putting off the inevitable.

Finally, they’re running on fumes the same day the sun comes out again, all traces of rain dried up, the rotting smell that gets worse and worse as you head further into town slightly mellowed out thanks to the downpour.

The four of them—him, Allie, Will, and Kelly—pile into his mother’s gigantic Escalade. It uses more gas than any of the other cars, but the storage space is worth it. They might even be able to fit in a food raid if they’re able to siphon gas quickly enough, though Harry doesn’t love the idea when Allie brings it up. The pumps at the local stations are quickly beginning to run dry from how many other times they’ve come to collect; they’ve started siphoning from cars parked in the street now, jimmying the gas doors open with screwdrivers and other tools. He doesn’t know what they’ll do when those run dry too, when they’re going to have to steal from the cars parked on people’s property. 

Gas, just like everything else, is a commodity. 

Of all the little enclaves that have popped up across town, theirs is by far the group that uses the most of it, though. Not so much for cars—the Maserati hasn’t been driven since the night of Fugitive, too noisy, too flashy—but for the generator, the crown jewel of the Bingham house and probably the real reason they’ve all stuck together like this.

It’s too dangerous to keep the lights on in the house, even with all the curtains drawn at night. Too noticeable—people would come looking. No, the generator is saved for only the most essential of uses: to keep the refrigerator running, to keep their stove and oven working, to keep their phones charged. Of course, the cell towers stopped working weeks ago as well, all communication with anyone else cut off, so their phones are now used for their built-in survivalist tools: flashlight, compass, and—most importantly—camera, for recording the state of town, taking pictures of raid spots before they go so they can analyze every turn, every corner, plot their moves wisely. 

(And the memories—the storage of photos, text conversations, voicemails, and call logs that keep Harry sane when he scrolls through them at night, reminding him that _it wasn’t always like this._ )

Eventually they’re going to need the generator for heat in the winter, too. If they last that long.

They pair off, like always: Harry and Allie, Will and Kelly.

Harry’s not sure how it happened this way instead of vice versa, but it works. He and Allie make a good team: she’s incredibly quick, darting to and from cars in the blink of an eye. Daring too, staying out in the open for far longer than he’d be comfortable with. Often he has to grab her by the wrist, pull her away when she’s crouched in front of a car or bent over the gas pump for too long. She gets upset with him when he does so, her eyes flaring up all angry, but she always goes with him, his fingers almost bruising around the skin of her wrist with how tightly he holds on.

Today, they’re making good progress. There’s an Exxon on the edge of South and 8th that hasn’t been too badly drained yet, and they get five full tanks’ worth and then some with the pumps, hauling the red plastic containers into the trunk as quickly as they can. It should be enough to last them for a while.

“Let’s go hit up the store while we’re out,” Allie says when they get the last of the gasoline loaded in the trunk. Behind them, Kelly and Will are finishing up with the little gas station convenience store, just a single box between the both of them to show for their efforts.

“No fucking way,” Harry says firmly. “It’s getting late. We need to get back.”

“Come on,” Allie insists. “We’re already here. Saves us the trip next week.”

“I think she’s right,” Will says when he and Kelly join them and load their meager box inside the trunk. “Everything in there’s raided. Pickings are slim.”

Inside the box, there’s a single bag of chips, a few bottles of unsweetened iced tea, two cans of reduced fat, low sodium chicken and rice soup, and a small container of 5-hour Energy.

Allie looks at him with her eyebrows raised, a ‘ _see?_ ’ sort of face. Harry scowls; he hates it when Will sides with her, as he so often does.

“I don’t know,” Kelly says uneasily. “Maybe if we got here earlier, but I think we should save it for another time. It’s too late now, we haven’t planned properly for this.”

Now, it’s Harry’s turn to raise his eyebrows at her. She flattens her lips into a line and is about to protest when, off in the distance, they hear a series of gunshots and some tires squealing. 

“Shit,” Harry hisses. They all move into action immediately, slamming the trunk shut and scrambling into the car. More gunshots go off, followed by some yelling. They can’t be seen, can’t be followed; by all accounts, no one in town knows they’re all together, that they’re all hiding in his house with access to electricity, and it needs to stay that way.

The drive home is silent, Allie dropping the subject of a food raid as they roll along the surface streets, cutting around the perimeter close to where the road cuts off into wilderness rather than go straight through the center of town. Harry’s hands are gripped to the steering wheel, his jaw tight.

**

Harry has no idea where all the guns in town have come from. 

In the first few weeks, there was some fighting over food at the stores, struggles over the last of the produce that was starting to go bad. Everything in the frozen aisles was already no good, and the meat section even worse—the smell was nearly unbearable, flies buzzing all around.

The following week when tap water started running brown and yellow, the town’s water treatment plant now officially out of commission from the outage, was when things got really bad. Apparently Brandon Eggles pulled a gun at the bottled water section of ShopRite and there was another awful bout of mass chaos, similar to the first night in front of the hardware store, only this time with fatalities.

From then on, everyone seemed to have manifested some type of firearm from God knows where. It’s every man for himself, the whole town splitting into these tiny factions, holed up in houses in small groups, travelling in packs like hyenas, willing to shoot their fellow man for precious resources. 

One time, when he and Allie were out on a food raid, they saw Luke and Helena driving by in a pickup truck, absolutely armed to the teeth with more guns than he could count. Harry spotted them first and had to grab Allie by the back of her shirt, pull her to the ground behind an old post office collection box to avoid being seen. Another time, they heard rather than saw someone get shot, then their body looted, over the last box of Cheerios at the grocery store, the scarves tied around their faces to protect from the smell of the rotting meat not enough to hide their shock. Allie’s grip on his hand was just as tight as his that time as they snuck out of the grocery store and then ran and ran, not sparing a glance backwards.

There were no guns in the Bingham residence, nor the Pressman’s, the Aldrich’s. Their parents were the good, coastal elite establishment Democrats they were always touted to be, of course there were no guns. Especially not after what happened with Harry’s father. 

That’s not the case with everyone else, apparently.

Harry travels around with a baseball bat now, and Will with a crowbar, though neither of them have had to use them yet. It doesn’t matter; it would be a losing battle. Their best bet is to remain unseen, take advantage of the daylight, keep to themselves.

Cassandra and Harry get into it sometimes. She and Allie both get that horrible _I told you so_ look on their faces, throwing lines from that day in the church back at him. 

_Two hundred and twenty-five people in two hundred houses doesn't make sense. We need to conserve electricity. Are we going to kill each other over food?_

He knows he fucked up. Okay? He _knows_. They’re all fucking living it. But how could he have predicted this? How could he have known that things would devolve this badly?

He shoots back that it’s too late for contingency plans, too dangerous and unpredictable now to gather people together, so the best thing they can do is try and move forward, protect what they have going on here. The generator, the house, the expensive, solar powered reverse osmosis system that his father had blown a gasket at his mother for shelling out the money for when they first got it—others would surely, surely kill them for it. 

It works in shutting them up because they know he’s right, and then after that everyone gets too depressed to continue the argument. 

**

Harry figures out, eventually, that something’s wrong with Cassandra.

He and Allie are in the kitchen one day, bickering as they so often do about schedules for the next time they can go into town for supplies. Gordie wants to come this time and make a trip to the pharmacy, gather whatever meds they can. With the town’s water supply now poisoned, they have to be extra careful about anything they ingest, drinking only bottled water, using only the reverse osmosis tap in the kitchen to bathe, boiling it over the stove just in case, filling buckets of it to bring to the tub.

Cassandra comes in and mumbles something about needing water—they’re all on strictly scheduled rations and it’s not her turn yet. Immediately, Allie turns from Harry and drops their argument, whisking Cassandra away into the other room, but not before Harry catches how sweaty she is, how her lips are turning blue. At night, sometimes he can hear Allie, Gordie, and Cassandra whispering amongst themselves in the living room, heads bent together. He can catch only snippets of certain words— _medicine, pharmacy, getting worse_ —but it’s easy to get the gist.

He doesn’t bring it up. Kelly, he’s pretty sure, knows something’s up too, but both of them avoid the subject. It feels touchy, too personal. Four of the five “guests” in his house are near strangers to him, despite having gone to school with them for the past ten-odd years.

That’s why Cassandra never comes with them on the raids, preferring to stay inside the house while Gordie looks after her, devising ways for them to collect rainwater, building traps for rabbits and small fowl that they can eat when they’re sick of spaghetti made with recycled pasta water and canned tomato sauce.

It’s not always bad. Sometimes Cassandra will manage to actually catch something, and the rest of them come back to a fresh roast, complete with a side of wild chives picked from the copse of trees that borders the Bingham property and frozen peas reheated with the rendered fat of whatever creature they’re eating. 

Other times at night, when it’s cool and breezy enough for the rotten smell to hardly be noticeable, the six of them will lie around on the pool chairs by the dirty, debris-filled water, passing around some of Harry’s weed in silence. There are only a couple joints left in his stash, rolled neatly into an old Altoids tin, so they try to make it last, smoking it down until the paper barely pokes out from between their fingertips, nearly scalding them. 

Harry tries not to think about anything, focusing not on the state of the world, how they’re all probably going to die in a few months (if they’re lucky), the dubious company with thom he finds himself stuck. Instead he concentrates on the pleasant buzz in his head, the sound of the crickets, the tiny little lights of the fireflies dotted all around the backyard, the only source of illumination for miles around.

**

It turns out to be one of these nights when they get back from the gas raid, the trip a huge success all things considered. But they’re still rattled enough from the gunshots and the tires that they unload the car in silence, stowing the extra gasoline away in the garage. Harry’s hands, when he finally manages to painstakingly peel them from the steering wheel, are shaking.

“Great haul,” Cassandra says as she comes into the garage to help them. “Where’d you guys find this?”

“South and 8th, the Exxon,” Harry mutters, not really in the mood to put up with her questions, even if they’re harmless.

“Maybe we should be posting up there, you know, have a scouting trip? Take some pictures? It seems like no one else has tapped into it yet,” Cassandra says, eyeing the tanks of gas lining the metal shelves on the far wall.

“We’re not going back there,” Harry says. His tone is final, but of course Cassandra’s not done.

“What? Why not?”

“Why don’t you ask your sister? She’s always so eager to get herself killed.”

“Hey!” Allie protests, coming over and shoving him on the shoulder. “I’m trying to help us!”

He really doesn’t feel like getting into it with the Pressman sisters right now. Allie is usually way more bearable than Cassandra—actually, he likes being around her sometimes. Most of the time. Except when she gets like this, obsessed with pushing the limits whenever they go out, trying to get as much as possible, testing their luck. She’s going to get herself and the rest of them killed with that recklessness, Harry’s sure of it.

There’s a dull ache starting to form behind his eyes, so instead of arguing with them, he ignores the offended looks they’re both wearing, turns on his heel, and heads inside the house.

Harry passes by Gordie in the study when he strides inside and ignores him too, also ignores the stack of granola bars and beef jerky laid out on the kitchen counter—their dinner. They need to have a food trip again soon, fuck. _Fuck._ He goes to the drawer next to the microwave, where the Altoids tin is stashed—there’d been a big fuss about him keeping it in his room, apparently it’s _everyone’s_ weed now, shit—and takes out a joint. Evening is settling out back by the pool, cicadas just beginning to wind down, and the smell of the smoke is enough to drive away the mosquitoes, along with the rot.

He takes a hit and leans back in the chair, stretching his legs out, letting his head settle onto the plastic backing. The ache in his temples slowly begins to subside and when he closes his eyes, he can almost pretend it’s just another summer, his parents not home, Lucy gone for sleepaway camp, and he’s just having alone time. Fuck, he’d love a cold beer right about now. There’s a lot of it in the house, but it’s not deemed essential enough for the luxury of fridge space.

Someone comes and snatches the joint out of his hands when he’s about to lift it to his lips again. “Hey!” he protests, indignant. It’s Allie, who brings it to her mouth and holds it there while she flops down onto the pool chair next to him.

“We share things now,” Allie says, tilting her head to the side to exhale the smoke.

Whatever. He doesn’t feel at all like sharing, but he also doesn’t want to get into an argument or let on exactly how agitated he is with her. It’s not like they had a big argument or anything, spooked off too soon by whomever was in the distance, but maybe one had been about to happen. He just—it doesn’t sit right with him. He’s even willing to admit, in the privacy of his own mind, that it scares him—a hell of a lot. Just how gutsy she is. Especially compared to him.

They pass the joint back and forth in silence until the others come and join them and Harry has to light up a new one, only three remaining in his little tin box. Kelly and Gordie, the least inclined of the six of them, take one hit each before just leaning back to watch the sun set over the tops of the trees surrounding Harry’s backyard. That had been one of the main draws of this house when his parents picked it out—the privacy. Away from most people in town, everyone else in the cul-de-sac childless, the plot of undeveloped land that stretched beyond the perimeter of the manicured back lawn. It led to a small creek, now dried up, that Harry used to venture out to when he was little. After a while, the trees would disperse and fade into another neighborhood development on the outskirts of town. That development’s gone now—today it’s just endless forest, stretching for miles and miles, all the way to the state line. Maybe even to the other side of the country. Harry doesn’t know.

Next to him, Allie interrupts his thoughts by passing him the joint. It's properly dusk now, getting time for them to go to bed—no electricity means taking advantage of all the daylight they can, rising early. When she hands it to him, their fingers brush in such a way that makes Harry turn his head slightly to glance at her, his neck stiff from looking listlessly up at the sky for so long. She raises her eyebrows. Fuck.

Well, it's not like he's going to say no.

**

They've never really talked about what they do at night.

It had just sort of ended up that way, like a continuation of the night of the party. It was honestly the least of Harry's expectations, with all that was happening, even though they were still flirting with each other in the kitchen before the lights had gone out. He thought they all had bigger problems to worry about now, that Allie probably would want to forget it happened now that they were all under one roof together.

But then one night, maybe a week or so in, she'd come into his room without a word and climbed into his bed and...that was that. Whatever—any port in a storm and all that. He guesses that's how she must feel as well. It’s not deep, always quick, no frills or fuss about it, something to ease their tensions, soothe their anxieties.

Tonight, she's annoyed with him, too. He can tell by the way she bites at his lip a little more viciously than necessary, the way she tells him to shut up when he tries to say anything at all. And she's distracted—scared, maybe, shaken by how close the gunshots had sounded, angry that she didn't get her way with the food raid. He's a little distracted too, mind still slightly blurry from the weed. But they still manage to make a time of it, breaths coming quick and short, sweat sticking their hair to each other's faces as they move against the sheets. They've gotten better at this, with practice—he's figured out what she likes by now, and when she gets that faraway look in her eyes that tells him she's thinking about something else instead of _this_ , the right now, he knows exactly which spot to press to make her sigh, ground her back to reality.

"We need to go into town for food soon," Allie says afterwards, pulling her t-shirt back on over her head. Harry covers his face with his pillow, wishing she would have just left without a word. "Harry," she says more firmly when he doesn't reply.

"Yeah, alright," Harry mumbles. He knows she's right. He just hates it so much—it's so dangerous. He wishes they didn't have to live like this.

It goes without saying that no one knows, least of all not Cassandra.

Well, Kelly might know, but Harry trusts her to keep it down. Plus it's not really in her personality to mind other people's business, though it does make him feel weird when he realizes that there's not a part of him that’s upset at her complete lack of jealousy.

Both Cassandra and Harry agree that they should do a proper surveillance trip before the actual raid this time, so that an almost run-in like the one at the gas station doesn’t happen again. Allie's the odd one out, arms crossed and red around the cheeks when Cassandra tells her that Harry's right and they need to be smart about it. She seems more upset with her sister than with him, though, and he doesn't try to rub it in when the four of them load up into the silver BMW, no need for storage room this time.

They need to make a pharmacy sweep as well, so Gordie comes with them instead of Will, which Harry actually prefers. He likes Gordie, all things considered—guy's smart as hell, third in class after him and Cassandra, thinks things through. He doesn't get mad at Harry the way Will does; the most he does when something upsets him is go all icy and quiet for a while, which Harry can more than deal with.

Most of the smaller specialty stores along the main strip have been looted by now, though there hadn't really been a ton of things of value in them anyway. Harry doubts anyone needs a full, 80-pound wheel of parmesan from the fancy cheese store on Witherspoon these days.

They go in the opposite direction than when they went for gas, leaving the car a mile or so off from the plaza where there's a Whole Foods and a CVS. Too conspicuous—they walk the rest of the way, keeping an eye out for anyone else, though it seems to be deserted. Things mostly are nowadays, with people darting around like shadows, barricading themselves inside when they're not out getting supplies they need. Harry’s just glad there hasn't been some kind of terrifying uprising yet, with people who have more firepower bullying others into consolidating power and resources. He thinks of Helena and Luke with all those guns, but neither of them seem like the type to do something like that. Maybe it's just a matter of time, but they're still in the guerilla state of things: stay out of sight, keep a low profile.

Kelly and Gordie peel off from them to hit up the CVS while Allie and Harry take Whole Foods, cameras out and ready to record the state of things, bandanas tied tight around their faces. From outside, the stench is pretty bad already, even with how accustomed Harry's grown to it. But inside it's going to be ten times worse, once they step through the long-since shattered and defunct automatic glass doors.

"Wait," he says as Allie's about to step over the metal framing, holding a hand out across her torso to stop her. "We should come up with a signal or something."

"For what?" she asks. He can only see her eyes through the bandana covering the lower half of her face, but she looks skeptical.

"In case something goes wrong? In case one of us is in trouble?"

Allie rolls her eyes. "Okay. Here's the signal: something's wrong, I'm in trouble. Got it? Good."

She doesn’t wait for him to reply and steps over the metal doors. Harry has no choice but to follow her.

Thankfully, the store is deserted. It’s the crack of dawn, a strategy they’ve been using to great affect for more popular destinations like grocery stores. Town full of teenagers, hardly anyone’s up at this hour, though from time to time they do spot some stragglers hanging around, always careful to keep out of sight. Today, they have one purpose: take as many pictures as possible, log what’s there that’s still good to take, memorize the location of what they need (and bring it to a more strategic spot if necessary) so that when they return at night, under cover of darkness. They’ll be in and out as quickly as possible with the car waiting right by the entrance for them to load up.

The smell inside is eye-watering. Harry tries his best to breathe exclusively through his mouth, but it’s almost like he can taste it, too. He gags; next to him, Allie brings a hand up to press the cloth of the bandana more securely against her nose.

“Okay, I’ll take the soup aisle if you want to take pasta,” Allie directs him. “We can meet in international cuisine and then check produce for anything that’s still good. Potatoes, maybe, if there are any left, and onions.”

Harry doesn’t like the idea of splitting up, but it makes sense for how the store is laid out. The meat and frozen section is pretty much an off-limits toxic waste zone now, infested with flies and maggots and a layer of rotten slime over everything. He nods, and heads off.

Pickings are slim. People have started to take more than they need, though theoretically there should be enough food already stocked throughout town to last the two hundred of them (or however many are left) for at least a couple months, even without frozen food. It’s down to the gluten-free, whole wheat, brown rice type pasta on the shelves, but beggars can’t be choosers. Harry takes several pictures and sweeps his arm over the metal shelving to shove all the available packages into one pile at the end of the aisle—easier to grab and go all at once when they return.

When he turns to the international food aisle, though, Allie is nowhere to be seen. 

Instinctively, Harry panics, his heart slamming into overdrive in a half second. He resists the urge to call out for her and instead checks down the soup aisle—nothing, just a pile of various canned goods pushed to the end of the shelf just like in his. He goes up and down the other aisles as well—the snacks and cereal had been cleaned out ages ago, so those shelves are completely bare—but she’s nowhere to be found. Okay, it’s not that big of a store, and he hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary. She has to be around somewhere. He forces himself to take a deep breath, no matter how disgusting, which helps his brain calm down a bit. She’s here somewhere. Definitely.

Between the dry and canned food aisle and the meat section, there’s a door with an “employees only” sign posted to it. Harry wouldn’t even have noticed it if it weren’t slightly ajar, with some slight movement happening behind it.

“Jesus,” he mutters to himself, almost running over to the door.

Sure enough, Allie’s there, crouched down at the old metal desk pushed into the corner of the room. It’s obviously the employee break and locker room, or maybe where the manager works by the looks of the stacks of files and papers strewn across the desk’s surface.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he hisses at her, pissed that she didn’t bother telling him she was running off somewhere.

“Seeing if there’s anything useful in here?” Allie doesn’t turn to face him, still busy rummaging through the last desk drawer.

“You couldn’t have fucking told me?”

“Sorry, are you my babysitter?”

“No,” he says, frustration clear in his voice, “but we _are_ supposed to be working together, so a little heads up would have been nice. This place isn’t safe, anyone could show up at any time.”

“Would you unclench? I was going to come right back.” She looks over her shoulder at him and rolls her eyes. “You sound like Cassandra.”

“I’m relaxed,” he says, his teeth gritted and his shoulders tensed up around his ears, the pinnacle of relaxation. “You just—you fucking scared me. That’s all.”

Allie furrows her eyebrows, a look that says _”why would you be scared for me?”_ which is a question to which Harry doesn’t know the answer.

“What the fuck could possibly be useful in here anyways? Looks like a bunch of useless shit to me.”

“Oh,” she says smugly, standing up now, careful to turn her body to keep her arms behind her back and whatever she’s holding out of his line of sight. “I beg to differ.” And then she brings an arm out and triumphantly holds up a crumpled up, quart-sized ziploc bag of weed.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, all anger gone in a rush, snatching the bag from her outstretched hands. “Holy shit. How did you know this was here?”

Allie shrugs. “Just a hunch. All the guys who worked here were the burnouts who moved back home after flunking college, so. There was a good chance.”

“God,” he says, marveling at the bag in his hands. “I could kiss you right now.”

“Maybe later,” she says, cracking a smile under the bandana that he can see through the crinkle at the corner of her eyes. It’s the first time she’s ever acknowledged what they do out loud in any way. She snatches the bag out of his hands and stuffs it into the center pocket of her hoodie, breezing past him out of the small room. “Come on, we have to do produce.”

Harry’s considerably good mood vanishes as quickly as it had come as they cross to the opposite side of the store into the produce section. By all means, the smell shouldn’t be as bad here, relatively speaking, but it only gets worse. It takes on a different quality too, deeper, sickeningly sweet. An uneasy feeling starts to well up in his stomach.

They turn the last corner into produce; everything seems as normal, vegetables rotting in their display cases, mold everywhere. Not a soul in sight. 

And then Harry sees it: a pair of shoes, sticking out from behind the salad kits kiosk, flies buzzing all around. The shape of the body is easy to interpret from there; it’s not a big salad kiosk.

Harry grabs Allie’s wrist, as he so often does when he’s trying to stop her from running into danger, but she’s also seen it and is frozen in place, eyes wide. 

They’ve never been this close to one before, at least not within line of sight. This one’s been here for a while now, though, because the smell is unforgettable, even filtered through the bandana cloth. Something roils in Harry’s stomach, heavy and acidic, and he quickly turns away before recognition can set in. He doesn’t know who it is—he doesn’t want to know.

Allie follows him without a word. They exit the store as quickly as they can, all notions of scouting the produce section gone. Outside, Harry releases a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding and tugs the bandana down over his face, sucking in the outside air.

“Did you see who—“ Allie begins to ask, but Harry shakes his head, cutting her off.

“No. No, I don’t know. Did you?”

Allie shakes her head.

Good. It’s better this way. Harry doesn’t want to face the reality of it being someone he knew well, someone he may have considered a friend back in the day. He figures Allie feels the same. God, her cousins are in town, aren’t they?

The morning sun feels good when they walk the perimeter of the plaza parking lot, sticking near the shadows of the buildings, to get to the CVS where they can wait for Kelly and Gordie to finish up at CVS. Harry concentrates on that, trying to block out the morbid part of his mind that can’t stop thinking about those shoes, completely plain and unremarkable, sticking out from the salad kiosk.

They don’t have to wait long under the awning of the CVS for Kelly and Gordie to come out, both slinging backpacks over their shoulders. Unlike food, medicine is small enough to take in one trip, so they don’t have to return at night like Harry and Allie do.

“Good haul?” Harry asks, noticing how Kelly’s backpack rattles slightly when she shifts it so she’s wearing both straps.

“Not bad, we cleared most everything useful that was left,” she answers. “Couple things of Advil, some cough syrup, some prescription antibiotics. Mostly everything else was gone though, especially behind the pharmacy counter.”

“So—so you didn’t find..” Allie trails off, looking meaningfully at Gordie. He shakes his head, eyes downcast.

She doesn’t say a word, just clenches her jaw tight and turns around, heading for the car. The three of them exchange a look with each other and follow.

Harry’s not one hundred percent sure what that’s about, but it’s not hard to guess.

Cassandra’s having a bad day when they return to the house; she’s sprawled on the couch, not even bothering to hide her state, gray and somehow simultaneously shivering and covered with sweat as she wraps his sister’s throw blanket around herself. He has enough social acuity to retreat into his bedroom when they gather, sensing that she and Allie and maybe Gordie want to be alone together. They can go over the photos and the game plan later.

When he ventures back downstairs after a while, it's obvious that Allie's given Cassandra some weed. She looks more mellowed out, relaxed on the couch, no longer shivering and discomforted. Maybe that's why Allie had been so eager to go to the store in the first place, maybe it's why she'd snuck off without bothering to tell Harry. He's starting to connect the dots now, with Cassandra. He doesn't know how it makes him feel.

**

The food raid goes off without a hitch, even with just the two of them. It feels good to have a win like this after Allie's quiet disappointment and sorrow from this morning, even with her employee break room discovery.

It's late when they return, everyone else waiting for them anxiously in the kitchen, lit by their phones and a few meager candles, careful to keep it dim enough so the light can't be seen from the outside. It's a bigger score than usual even without any produce, cases of canned and dried food to add to their stock. Harry thinks he has a pretty good idea of why people have been avoiding that particular store. 

To celebrate, he fishes out some microwave popcorn that he remembers his sister keeping around for sleepovers with her friends. The entire kitchen smells like butter and salt, the six of them sharing the treat in the dark like they're in a movie theater, except there's no movie playing.

Afterwards, Harry doesn't feel much like sleeping at all. He'd managed to snag his Altoids tin back earlier; now that there's an entire bag of the stuff it seems like what meager remainder of his original stash is once again his and his alone. When they all go to their rooms, instead of getting into bed, he slides the window up, takes off the screen from its fastenings, and climbs out onto the slanted rooftop—he hasn't done this since he’d been a kid, young enough to climb anywhere and everywhere without any real fear for the consequences. His mom had caught him, though, and had given him such a dressing down that he'd never done it again.

Now, he eases himself onto the roofing and lies back, joint secured behind his ear, ready to just do nothing for a while, let his mind drift.

But then there's a clattering to the right of his head as someone else climbs through the window and steps out onto the rooftop. It's Allie, of course, the only person who has cause to seek him out at night, her curls haloed in moonlight as she looks down at him.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing," he shrugs. It's the truth.

"Huh," she says, and then moves to lie down next to him. Harry, to be polite more than anything else, takes the joint out from behind his ear and lights it, passing it to her for the first hit.

They lie in silence like that for some time, just like when it’s all of them by the poolside, only now there's a vast expanse of inky, black sky above them. It's strangely peaceful like this, no sound up here except for the gentle rustle of the night breeze through the treetops surrounding the house and the crickets down below.

"I'm sorry for being such a bitch," Allie says at last, smoking curling out of the edges of her lips as she speaks.

"You're not a bitch," Harry says, even though she can be. Just sometimes. She's stubborn and reckless and a little scary. "You're just intense."

"Cassandra's dying," she says next, which is not what he'd been expecting to hear, though it confirms what he already suspects. "She has been since she was like, ten, technically, I guess. But with the way things are now...and her medicine ran out a while ago."

"Is that why you're so gung-ho about getting supplies all the time?" Harry asks, putting two and two together.

Allie breathes out, a harsh puff of air, and passes the joint back to him. "Yeah. I just...I want her to have what she needs. You know? Enough food. Heat. Stuff like that. And the weed, that helps a lot. She was already on it before, medical. But the closest dispensary's in Milford, so obviously that's not an option anymore."

Shit. Suddenly he feels vaguely guilty about how possessive he's been over his meager stash, even the one they're passing back and forth between them now. It's the only thing that really helps with his anxiety though, calms him down when he needs it most, when his thoughts are too loud and the world is too bright.

"But it's not a cure, you know, just something for the pain. Without her medicine...it's just a matter of time." Allie swallows dryly at that. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches her blinking rapidly, maybe to stem the flow of tears from falling.

"I'm—sorry," he says stiltedly, not knowing how to respond. He feels bad, he does, but in a strange, detached sort of way. It's all so surreal, the way life is now, how much they took for granted in their old lives. The simple luxury of health care, access to medicine. Even the way things had been when they first arrived at this place, cell phones and electricity still working for everyone. Their first instinct was to throw a rager in the church—how absurd, Harry thinks now. How absurd.

"It's okay," Allie says quietly. "We're not giving up yet. There's one last pharmacy in town that we haven't checked. The local one down on Main. Gordie and I are going there in two days." She sounds resolute, a little defiant, like maybe she expects him to try and talk her out of it. But he suspects there's nothing in the world that could change her mind about going, now that he knows the reason.

He knows the one—it had been run by the Wilmer family for years, right smack dab in the middle of town on the main strip. AKA, probably the most dangerous place to be. Harry bristles at the thought—of Allie going at all, but in particular Allie going with Gordie. It's not that he doesn't like or trust Gordie, it's just that...he'd prefer to keep an eye on her himself, keep her out of unnecessary trouble. He just doesn't like it, the thought of not being out there with her.

"I'll go with you. You don't have to go with Gordie. I'll go." He says it before he can give it too much thought, acting on instinct.

"You? You hate going into town," Allie says, surprise in her voice.

"Yeah, well. Someone has to make sure you don't get killed. Besides, we're a team, right? Same car, remember?"

She cracks a smile. "Yeah. I remember. Thanks.”

Next to him, she scoots a little closer, keeping contact with his hand a little longer than necessary when he passes the joint back to her. It's down to just the roach now, embers glowing faintly against the rolling paper between her fingers. She takes a last drag and then puts it out on the roof tile, watching the little flecks of orange burn bright and then die out.

After that, they lie in silence some more, the night draping heavy around them like a weighted blanket, the great immensity of the sky stretched out above them and their strange new world.

"You know, Gordie told me that all the stars here are off," Allie comments after a while. "He and Bean tracked it in an almanac before the lights went out, after that solar eclipse."

"...What does that mean?"

"It means...that this really is a whole new place. That these stars, in this pattern, have never been seen before. So all the usual constellations we know aren't there anymore."

"Maybe we should make new ones," Harry suggests, thinking about how his dad had shown him when he was young how to find the north star, out on their sailboat when they would spend their summers down the Gold Coast.

"That's a nice thought," Allie says, stretching her hand out above both their heads, tracing random patterns against the sky. Somehow, she's moved even closer; he can feel her warmth radiating onto his skin, his hands twitching by his sides. "I wouldn't know how to make shapes from this though. There are too many.”

"Yeah," Harry agrees—it's true. By all means, theirs is the only civilization in the entire world, and their whole town has no electricity. There are more stars than he ever thought was possible, speckled like painted gems across the velvet sky.

"Maybe another time," she says, letting her arm drop. It ends up pressed against his, warm and sure. "Hey. You did a good job today, by the way."

"Yeah," he mutters, his stomach tight. "You too."

**

The night before the pharm raid, Harry has uneasy dreams. He and Allie are on the roof again and he's listening to her name constellations he doesn't know, tracing shapes that he can’t recognize with an outstretched arm. As he stares up at the sky, it gets bigger and bigger, until the blackness swallows up everything around him—the stars, Allie, the roof underneath him, and he's falling, his feet somewhere above his head. He's wearing the shoes they saw on the body at the grocery store, gray and scuffed and unremarkable.

It's overcast in the morning, the sunshine that's lasted all week blurred over by depressed clouds. It looks like it might be another summer storm tonight, the dawn bleak and dreary as Harry and Allie pull up in the BMW. They hadn't been sure about whether or not to ditch it a couple blocks away and sneak over on foot, or drive it all the way there in case they needed to make a quick getaway; in the end, Harry had decided that this close to the center of town, they might as well have it nearby.

There's a restlessness in his gut as they exit the car, Harry clutching at his baseball bat as he holds a backpack over one shoulder. In front of him, Allie is walking with purpose towards the pharmacy, though he can see the line of her shoulders is tense, her hair gathered in a low ponytail by the nape of her neck.

The pharmacy storefront glass has long since been smashed in, shards of it scattered all over the pavement and on the inside. They gingerly step over the frame, the glass crunching underfoot against the dull tiling. The front reception area is bare, items scattered all over the desk, chairs turned over on their sides. In that moment, Harry immediately knows: whatever they’re looking for is not here and probably hasn’t been in a long time.

"Allie," Harry says quietly. He has a feeling about what's in store for them once they go behind the desk and check the shelves, and he wants to make sure she's prepared for it.

She doesn't say anything to him, just tenses her jaw and pushes open the door to the back room. After just a second, Harry follows.

As he suspected, it's completely ransacked. The shelves that aren't bare are tipped over, with random meds that none of them could possibly have any use for scattered all over the ground—prenatal supplements, prescription deodorant, shit like that.

"Allie," he tries again, hesitantly reaching out to touch her wrist. She jerks away like she's been burned, her hand balling up into a fist. She doesn't move forward and try to desperately search through the bare bottles and boxes on the ground—he's sure she must know exactly what Cassandra's medicine looks like. There's no point.

Instead, she turns sharply to him, a fire in her eyes. "Who has it?"

"What? What are you talking about?" he asks, confused.

"Someone had to come and take all of it. I know no one else here has a congenital heart defect," she says viciously. "So _who has it?_ "

He doesn't like where she's going with this—not at all. "How the fuck am I supposed to—"

He's cut off by a clattering noise outside the door, near the entrance of the pharmacy, followed by the unmistakable sound of footsteps. His eyes widen, looking towards the door before darting back to Allie—

—who is already heading towards the door, a determined look in her eyes.

"Allie, what the fuck," he hisses, darting forward to try and catch her by the wrist, but she's too quick, already out the door before he can reach her, rushing headlong into danger.

"Fuck," he mutters under his breath. His heart is pounding in his chest suddenly, rushing in his ears—these days, she always seems to be the cause. He readjusts his grip on the baseball bat before creeping towards the door, wanting to keep a low profile, have the element of surprise on his side in case something really does happen.

Outside the door he can hear muffled voices—Allie's, and someone else's. She's talking to someone, whoever had been in the storefront. The other person—male, by the sounds of it, suddenly raises his voice, yelling something. Harry takes this as his chance to quickly creep out of the back room, crouched down so the reception counter blocks him from line of sight.

It takes a second to recognize to whom the voice belongs. It's Greg Dewey, someone entirely unremarkable; Harry wouldn't have even known his name if Dewey hadn't become infamous for pissing his pants on the seventh grade school trip. He's holding a gun to Allie, who has her hands up by her head and is trying to calm him down.

"Stop, Dewey, you don't know what you're doing," she says, her voice strangely calm.

"No one's seen you in weeks, Pressman Jr.," Dewey sneers. "All of a sudden you show up here, in the middle of town? In _our_ territory? I don't think so. Who are you here with? What drugs are you trying to steal?"

"Our?" Allie asks, quick to catch on. "Who's our?"

"Don't play fucking stupid. Everyone knows this is Campbell's territory. And don't change the subject—I know you're not alone."

"There's no one else," Allie says. Behind the counter, Harry's knuckles are white against the baseball bat. One wrong move and Dewey could pull the trigger—he can picture it, and feels sick. "I'm alone."

"Yeah right," Dewey retorts. "I know you and your bitch sister are hiding out with someone. Is it Bingham? Grizz? One of those other fuckin' Chads no one's seen in weeks?"

"Yeah, fine, you caught me," Allie says, shrugging. She shifts slightly, almost imperceptibly, but enough to that Harry can see it—she knows he's there, waiting. "Any moment now I'm gonna give a signal that says 'something's wrong, I'm in trouble, come help me.'"

Recognition clicks with Harry immediately—her signal from the other day in the grocery store, said as a joke at the time.

In a split second, he jumps out from behind the counter, swinging his baseball bat, while Allie charges forward and tackles Dewey, trying to wrestle the gun out of his hands. The three of them crash into the wall next to the reception counter, over by the shattered storefront.

There's a wild commotion, all movement and limbs that Harry can’t make sense of, and then an ear-splitting _bang!_ followed by a sharp, hot pain in the side of his leg that causes him to cry out and fall to the ground, cutting his palm on a shard of broken glass as he goes.

The gun, freshly fired, is somewhere on the floor between him and Dewey and, gritting his teeth through the pain, Harry lunges for it the same time Dewey does.

But then Allie, the only one of them who hasn't fallen to the floor, grabs his baseball bat that he's somehow let go of and swings it, hard and fast, at Dewey. The blow lands on his skull with what seems like a sickening _crack_ —Harry can't hear very well, a high-pitched ringing hovering over everything from the gunshot, the world sounding foggy and underwater. Dewey's body is swung backwards with the momentum of the swing, hitting with yet another muted crack against the broken ledge of the storefront. He moans in pain, blood pooling dark around his nape.

"Come on, come on, come _on_ ," Allie is saying desperately to Harry, whose ears are still ringing horribly from the gunshot. She grabs him by the hand, the same one with the cut, blood smearing all over her palm as she pulls him up. The pain in his leg comes to attention then, searing hot and acrid—Allie throws his arm around her shoulders, practically dragging him out the door.

He comes to a little bit more outside, enough to be able to stand on his own and realize that he hasn't actually been shot in the leg—just grazed, the skid mark angry and blistering, but not too bloody. Most of the blood is coming from the cut on his hand, which is actually rather deep.

"Allie—" he says when they get back into the car, Harry in the passenger seat and Allie in the driver's, thanking all the deities that they'd decided to park it close by.

"I know, I know," she chants, rooting around in her backpack for something. "You told me, you're always warning me, I know." She finds what she's looking for finally, pulling out one of those mini-bottles of Tito's found in hotel fridges.

"What the fuck?" he says as she unscrews the cap. "You've had that this whole time?"

"It's for emergencies," she mutters, pulling his hand over to her and pouring the vodka on top.

 _"Jesus!"_ Harry exclaims, trying to draw his hand away, but her grasp on his wrist is iron-clad. "Motherfuck! Stop!" It burns worse than the bullet graze on his leg, acute and excruciating, tears welling at the corner of his eyes—God, it's the worst thing he's ever felt.

"Shut the fuck up!" Allie snaps, capping the bottle and putting it in the center cup holder. "We barely have medical supplies as it is. You can't get infected."

Then she puts the car into drive and peels out onto the street—it's obvious she's never really driven before, her stops and starts jarring and clunky, but Harry doesn't care much, his hand and leg both still stinging badly. They just need to get out of here—Dewey said this was apparently Campbell's territory? Which means the rest of the town seems to have completely broken into factions now, gang warfare fully in swing. He feels sick, sick and bewildered.

"Do you think we killed him?" Allie asks, her voice shaking. The hard-edged, daring Allie from before is gone—Harry thinks that version only comes out when it's necessary, when all other options are exhausted, when there's someone of her's she needs to protect. Like Cassandra.

_(Like him?)_

"I don't know. Maybe. But he deserved it, he was going to kill you, and he fucking _shot_ me—"

"He didn't shoot you," Allie interrupts. "I did."

"...You _what?_ "

"When I tackled him, I tried to get the gun out of his hand, but he was pointing it at you from when you jumped out and—and I just. Pulled the trigger," she says, sounding exhausted, like all the adrenaline from earlier has been sapped from her.

Harry, cradling his blooding hand against his now blood-stained shirt, gapes at her. "You fucking _shot_ me," he repeats, dumbfounded.

"It was an accident," Allie snaps defensively. "Get over it. You're fine."

They drive in silence, everything that just transpired finally settling down over them. This type of confrontation was always a possibility, they knew—but actually facing it is another thing entirely. And from a scrawny kid like Greg Dewey...Harry supposes they're lucky it wasn't someone like Jason Alvarado holding the gun to Allie. Hell, every trip they've taken into town so far, Harry had half expected to end in some kind of terrifying standoff. It was only a matter of time before it actually happened.

"Hey," Harry says when they finally pull up to the house. He's just finished tearing off a bit of his sleeve to tie around his palm in a makeshift bandage. Allie's looking straight ahead, her hands clenched around the steering wheel. "I think you saved my life today."

She glances at him, turning her head just slightly. His blood is stained on her shirt, on her hands, on the steering wheel. "Only cause you saved mine first. Same car, remember?"

He laughs at that, just once, a dry chuckle. "Yeah."

**

The blowout that happens between Cassandra and Allie afterwards is massive.

It's not like any of the fights Harry and Allie have, where they bicker and get in each other's faces, nor the ones he used to have with Cassandra back in the real world, which were biting and always about one-upping the other.

It's quiet, sharp, painful in an intimate way that Harry, sitting in the corner of the kitchen next to Gordie, feels guilty for even listening to.

Cassandra expressly forbids Allie from attempting to find the medicine any longer, after she and Harry come back inside, Harry injured and the two of them just nearly escaping death. Especially not when she hears about how someone's stolen it, and how that someone is most likely Campbell, from Dewey's mentioning.

"He held a gun to my head on like, the second night we got here, in case you've forgotten," Cassandra says. She's feeling better today, it seems, more color and life in her cheeks. Well enough to argue with Allie, at least.

"He's our _cousin_ ," Allie snaps back. "He knows you need it."

"Campbell doesn't give a shit about any of his family, he never has. You saw how he kicked Sam out the very first night."

"Then I'll steal it from him," Allie retorts. "I'll find out where he's keeping all the drugs and take them."

"You won't," Cassandra says firmly.

"You can't stop me," Allie says, stubborn. "And it's for you! You need it." Her voice quavers, going quiet. "You need it."

"There's no use in me having my medicine if it gets you killed in the process," Cassandra says, her jaw tight. Allie's eyes are welling with tears now, but hers are dry. "It's not worth that."

"It is for me," Allie whispers.

Harry wishes he weren't here to witness it, but they launched into the argument while Gordie was still tending to his hand at the kitchen table, where the light is best during the day. He thins his lips into a line, careful not to make any facial expressions that could be interpreted as assent or dissent towards anything that's being said. Gordie is doing the same, his eyes trained on the wound on Harry's palm.

"What do you think mom would say?" Cassandra says. "Both daughters dead. One because of the other. What if one day, the rest of town woke up back home? But not us, because you decided to go and get yourself killed over me. And Allie—" she sounds tired, like perhaps they've had this conversation before, only now it's for real, life or death, given Allie and Harry's experience in town and the fact that the medicine really is nowhere within access "—don't spit on my memory like that when I'm gone. I don't want to be the reason you die. Because even if you manage to get your hands on the medicine, it's still going to run out eventually. You're just buying time that's already gone. The sooner you accept it, the better."

Allie's crying silently now, tears falling in streams down her face. She bows her head so that her hair curtains her off from the rest of the world. Harry swallows, his throat dry, his own eyes burning. The two sisters both get up and exit the kitchen at the same time then, leaving Gordie to awkwardly finish patching up Harry's hand, his hands shaking as he wraps gauze around the wound.

That night, Harry climbs out onto the roof again. Up above, the clouds from this morning have gathered even further, pressing low and laden in the sky, hanging like ominous shadows over the town. He leaves the window open and sure enough, Allie climbs through after about a half an hour or so. It's hard to tell in the dark, but her eyes look swollen and rimmed with red. He doesn't comment, instead digging the Altoids tin out of his pocket and offering a joint to her—it's his last one, and she might need it more than he does.

But she shakes her head, curling her knees up under her chin and wrapping her arms around her shins, folding in on herself. Without turning her head away from the sky, she lets a hand drop to the side, seeking out his, the one wrapped in bandages. He takes it and they hold hands on the rooftop in silence.

“Sorry I shot you,” she mumbles, eyes upturned towards the sky, lashes casting long shadows across her cheeks.

“It’s okay,” he says, amused. “I have a badass scar now. And I get to say I survived being shot.”

She rolls her eyes and cracks a smile, just the corner of her lips lifting slightly.

Harry, lying on his back next to her, studies her profile outlined against the full moon that’s just peeking out from behind a massive thunderhead, all the stars blotted out by the cast of clouds, chin tipped up towards the sky. A lock of hair hangs over her corner of her eye, the moonlight moving smoothly across the ridges and dips of its wild curl. She looks so pretty, and so sad, and all Harry can do is smooth his thumb over her knuckles over and over again.

"Let's go to bed," she murmurs after a while. Her hand is warm in his, and she doesn't let go of it as they get up and crawl back through the window into his bedroom. When they get under the covers, she lets go and turns her body so her back is facing towards him, curling into a ball.

The day they've had finally seems to hit him then, exhaustion seeping into his bones like water soaked over thin paper. He closes his eyes, too tired to think about anything—Dewey's ominous words about the state of the town, what they're going to do about Cassandra, how it felt to have Allie's hand in his, what it means that she's curled up next to him now. His mind goes blissfully blank, knowing nothing but dreamless sleep. Outside, thunder rolls and it finally begins to rain.

In the morning, Allie seems to have her spirits back, because she wakes him up by pressing her lips against his jaw until he stirs, and then she climbs on top of him. No words are exchanged, just the morning light filtering through the screenless window to the right of his bed, their breathing slow and steady, in sync. She doesn't say anything when she leaves, just gives his hand a final squeeze as she climbs out of bed and quietly closes the door behind her.

**

Kelly finally corners him in the living room two days later, while everyone else is out back trying to see if they can skip rocks over the stagnant, dirty pool water.

"What's going on between you and Allie?" she asks, her arms folded in front of her. Harry's not sure how to respond—she'll know if he denies it outright, she's too sharp for that. And it’s not although he and Allie expressly decided to keep it a secret; that was more for convenience’s sake.

"What do you mean?" he asks, trying to deflect.

"I know you two were together the night of the party, and I know you've been sneaking around at night. So what are you doing?"

"Seems like you already know," Harry mumbles, not wanting to have this conversation.

"No, I'm asking: what are _you_ doing, Harry?"

"I—what? I'm not doing anything."

"Her sister's dying," Kelly says emphatically, uncrossing her arms. "I just...you weren't exactly the best boyfriend when we were together. I just don't want you taking advantage of the situation."

"Jesus," Harry says, suddenly pissed. "Is that what you think of me? No, it was her idea, okay? I'm just going along with it. And I'm not her _boyfriend._ "

Kelly seems to relax a little, her shoulders untensing. "Okay," she accepts, her voice less accusatory now, more empathetic. "I believe you, okay? You're a lot different now compared to when we first got here but I just—I had to ask."

"Yeah, alright," Harry mumbles.

"So if you're not her boyfriend, then what are you guys?"

Harry laughs humorlessly. "I don't know. I don't know—at first I think we were just sleeping together. You know, distract from thoughts of existential doom. But now I don't know."

"Do you think...having some kind of nebulous thing is the best idea right now, with everything that's going on with Cassandra?" Kelly sounds uneasy.

"Look, I'm not trying to be—more than whatever we are," Harry mutters, rubbing a hand over his forehead wearily. He's tried studiously to avoid overthinking his relationship with Allie, but the thoughts weigh heavy in his mind now, prompted by Kelly's questioning. His voice goes soft. "I'll be whatever she needs me to be."

Kelly seems to see something there; she furrows her brows, her lips twitching. "Harry...do you—"

"No," he says quickly, knowing what she's going to ask. "No. I mean—I don't think so. I don't know."

She leaves it at that, seeming a lot more comforted at the idea that he's not being a total asshole to Allie, the way he’d been with her. Harry takes a deep breath when she's out of the room, running a hand through his hair.

He knows he likes Allie, alright? He's known it for some time now. Hasn't stopped liking her, ever since she showed up in the parking lot the night of Fugitive. He thinks she likes him too, but—things are just so complicated right now, with the world the way that it is, with Cassandra, with their days spent wondering if they have enough food and water to last the next few weeks, whether they'll starve first or get killed by the infighting in town.

It's not what they need; he knows it, and she knows it. That's why they don't talk about it. But Harry realizes that he doesn't really care, as long as he's still with her, as long as he can still be around to keep her from running headfirst into danger instead of away from it.

**

Fall comes slowly but surely, the heat of the summer reaching an absolute peak in August before finally dying down.

The smell is so bad that they only go into town once more for gas, surviving on canned food and things that they can forage from the foliage surrounding Harry's house. Kelly finds a robin's nest and cries when she climbs up the tree and steals the speckled blue eggs, but they all have near religious experiences from how good they taste fried on top of frozen toast from bread Cassandra baked a few weeks ago. 

Will swears up and down that he saw a turkey bobbing around the trees one afternoon, but Harry personally thinks he's full of it. He's never once seen a wild turkey in Connecticut in his life—turkey vultures, maybe waiting to feast on their remains, attracted by the smell of death all over West Ham. The days grow shorter and the nights grow longer, and when they're not doing careful inventory or rationing, they're languishing in the house, coming up with useless games and distractions to pass the time. Skipping rocks across the pool is a popular one, as is makeshift cornhole in the backyard. Will and Gordie have been playing the same game of Scrabble for weeks now, making up new words and illegally rearranging letters when they run out of tiles.

Cassandra's getting worse. There will be a rare day when she's feeling fine, nearly back to her normal self, and she'll venture outside to tend to the small garden she and Kelly have attempted to start in the backyard. Most of the time, though, there's a bluish tint on her lips and she shivers on the couch, smiling weakly and pretending to be fine whenever anyone else passes by, particularly Allie. Harry's not entirely sure what's going to happen to her, but he thinks it's somewhere along the lines of eventual heart failure from the snippets of conversation that he manages to catch from Allie and Gordie. There's no telling when exactly it might happen.

Allie comes to Harry's room most nights, usually to lie on the roof with him and gaze at the stars. She's indeed made her own constellations, though he's never entirely sure what shapes she's pointing out when she shows him—six of them, one for each person in the house: Harry, Allie, Cassandra, Will, Kelly, and Gordie.

"The Allie and Cassandra ones are connected," she says, tracing her pointer finger across the night sky. "The Pressman System. And then you're over there," she shifts her finger, "to the right of me. And around us there's kind of like, a box," she draws a rectangle, "for a car. In the same car, right?"

"Right," he agrees, already having lost track of the shapes. All he can see is her, smiling under the stars, her blonde hair splayed out across the dark roof tiles. 

In the distance, there are more gunshots, the far-off sound of a commotion in town. That's been happening more often these days too, the fighting at night—but they're far away enough from it in his secluded neighborhood that it can't affect them. Especially while they're on the roof, where the rest of the world feels like it doesn't exist; it's just him, Allie, and the moonlight above them.

Sometimes at night they won't speak at all, just enjoying the silence of the night together. Sometimes Harry cracks open a disgusting, warm beer, though thankfully not quite flat yet, that they pass back and forth while chatting idly about their plans for the year had they not gotten on those buses (Harry was going to spend two weeks in Europe before heading off to Boston, Allie was going to send Cassandra to Yale and then go on a road trip with Will to the Finger Lakes). Sometimes she drags him inside so they can have sex. Other times she crawls into bed with him so they can just sleep together before leaving in the morning without a word.

The day finally comes in early September when they need to go back in town for food. Kelly and Will volunteer to go instead of Harry and Allie—Will also suggests that all four of them could go—but Allie shoots the idea down quickly. Now that they know the town has been divided into territories, it's deemed too dangerous to travel in groups larger than two, and Allie is going stir crazy sitting at home. She wants to be out there, to be doing what she can—Harry can tell from the way her hands twitch, how her fingernails are bitten down to the quick.

Will looks like he wants to protest when she says it'll just be her and Harry; they've all been on edge ever since the Dewey incident. But he keeps his mouth shut, probably because he knows he won't be able to convince Allie otherwise when she's already got her mind set. Harry's learned that too, only in this case it's working in his favor. He's not sure when the pair of them together, _Allie and Harry_ , became the default state, but he's certainly not going to protest. Plus all that's left of the Dewey incident, other than the occasional nightmare or random bout of anxiety, is the mark on his leg and the scar on his palm, both still pink but fully healed over.

There isn't a store in town they haven't scoped out already. Harry definitely doesn't want to go back to the Whole Foods, and ShopRite is too close to the center of town, possibly in Campbell's "territory" or whatever the fuck. They decide to head instead to the opposite side of West Ham, hit up the Stop & Shop on the edge of town limits, over by the deserted elementary school. No one from their group has been there since the end of June; it was where Kelly had found the roll of cookie dough she burned on the fourth of July. In general, they haven't ventured over to that portion of town, only because there's nothing there besides the one grocery store, the school, and small residential streets.

It's still dark when they drive over in the Escalade. The tank's running lower than Harry would have liked, but all the gas they've saved up needs to be set aside for the generator now, and they haven't had any use for the cars in weeks. They have enough to get them there and back safely though, which in the end is all that matters.

"Wish the radio still worked," Allie says idly as he drives, keeping a careful eye out the window for people around. The baseball bat stays with her now, wedged between her knees in the passenger seat. "I wonder what new songs have come out since we left. We missed all the summer hits."

"Wish we still had songs in general. I'm sick of listening to what I have saved on my phone."

"Wow, using your phone battery for _music?_ I'm telling on you," Allie jokes, shifting in the leather car seat.

He snickers, trying to hide how anxious he actually is, consciously keeping his grasp on the steering wheel loose and easy, even though his hands are sweating. This is his first time out of the house since the pharm raid, the Dewey incident—the last time they went for gas, Harry's hand was still all busted up, so Kelly, Will, and Gordie went by themselves while he and Allie stayed behind with Cassandra. But hey, he figures that since something bad already happened to them last time, the likelihood of something equally bad or worse happening twice in a row is pretty low. At least that's what he chants in his own head, with nothing but sheer force of will to back it up.

They're going to do their usual thing: get in, record where everything is, strategically place it, and get out. Hopefully before dawn breaks this time, and hopefully without seeing another soul. 

The inside of the store is a lot worse for wear compared to the last time Harry'd seen it: entire aisles are knocked over, the usual rotten smell permeating everything, piles of what were once fruit now reduced to fly-covered mush in their produce stands. But not everything's bad—underneath the knocked over shelves, they find boxes of Kraft mac and cheese, canned peas and carrots, even an unopened, untouched bag of marshmallows that Allie suggests they can roast over the gas stove with the others at night.

"I don't think there's enough here to warrant a whole second trip back," Harry says when they've dug out the last container of useful food. "Why don't we just get the car now and load it up fast, before the sun comes up?"

Allie looks at him with her eyebrows raised, surprised that he's the one suggesting it, like their roles are reversed. Only she doesn't try to talk him out of it, agreeing readily and blinking at him like maybe she's seeing something new. He shifts under the scrutiny; it's not a huge risk, after all, and it just makes logical sense. She probably had been about to suggest it herself, he just beat her to the punch.

They park the car right up near the broken entrance doors, all the way up on the curb and sidewalk, because it's not like there are any pedestrians or foot traffic that they might block. Upon second sweeping, they also come across an entire case of bottled water that had gotten trapped under a shelving unit; the bottles are dusty and the plastic casing is ripped, but it's perfectly good water, certainly the crown jewel of their haul for today.

It puts Harry in a good mood, eases some of the tension sitting in his gut as he and Allie load the trunk, working quickly as the sun begins to peek over the horizon, coating the world in weak early morning light. He grows complacent, distracted with how the pale blonde of Allie's hair suits the light so perfectly, her curls frizzy in the humidity from the morning dew, how every time she smiles at him while carrying boxes of food, all he wants to do is kiss her.

So it's her reaction he notices first when they make their final load, the last of the food packed into the trunk of the car. She has her arm reached up, about to close the trunk, until she freezes in place and then reaches her other free arm out to grab Harry's, her grip tight and frantic.

"Shit," she says under her breath. Harry whips his head around—there's a lone figure running directly towards them from across the parking lot, and they've been caught completely out in the open, standing there in front of the popped trunk like a pair of deer in headlights.

Harry knocks her hand away and shuts the trunk, grabbing her wrist so he can drag her around to the front of the car. But she doesn't budget, frozen in place.

"Allie, what the fuck are you doing?" Harry hisses urgently. "We have to _move_."

"Wait," she says, squinting. "That's—that's _Grizz_."

"Grizz Visser? Okay, so fucking what?"

She turns her eyes towards him. "Don't you remember what Dewey said?"

He does now that she brings it up— _'Is it Bingham? Grizz? One of those other fuckin' Chads no one's seen in weeks?'_

"No one's seen him in weeks," Allie echoes. "He's not with Campbell."

"It doesn't matter, that doesn't mean it's safe," Harry tries to persuade her, but it's too late. Grizz is closer than before, waving his arms at them like he's trying to get their attention. Well, at least he's not openly hostile, Harry thinks—until he catches the look on Grizz's face. He looks frantic, waving his arms in what now Harry can recognize as a warning, shooing them away.

"Grizz!" Allie calls out, and Harry almost wants to grab her and put his hand over her mouth. She waves back at him. He finally reaches them, out of breath and red in the face.

"Oh my God," he pants, putting his hands on his knees. And then he speaks very quickly, all in a rushed jumble. "Oh my _God_ , I can't believe I found you Allie, Sam's been looking for you and Cassandra for _weeks_ , but listen, you guys have to get out of here now, Campbell and his crew are coming here _right now_ to take over this spot, you guys have to get out."

"What? Wait, Sam's with you?" Allie sounds bewildered, trying to take it all in.

"There's no time to explain, you have to go now, both of you," Grizz says, looking at Harry confused for a split-second, like the sight of them together isn't what he'd expected. In the distance, they hear a car horn blaring, followed by what sounds like senseless yelling. Harry recognizes the voices—Clark and Jason. They definitely don't want to go up against that.

"Let's go Allie," he says, tugging on her sleeve. She seems reluctant to follow, but does after the car horn goes off again, this time much closer.

"Come find me!" Grizz calls to them when they get into the car. He's heading towards the back of the store now, looping behind the wooden delivery palettes and into the hedges that lead to the elementary school on the other side. "I'm with Sam, Becca, some others. We have medicine, we have food. We're in the woods, come find us!"

The car horn blares for a third time—Harry can see the other vehicle approaching now, and he shifts the Escalade into drive, heading out towards the loading dock of the grocery store so he can take the delivery entrance out onto the side service road and avoid being seen. They barely make it; Harry's hands are sweating and he's holding the steering wheel so tight that the old cut on his palm pulsates angrily from the pressure.

"Allie," he says, glancing over at her. She looks shell-shocked in her seat, her mouth hanging open loosely and her brows arched in bewildered marks on her forehead. He already knows what she's thinking. "Allie, you _cannot_ be serious."

"He's with my cousin," she says quietly, like she still can't quite believe it.

"So? Campbell's your cousin, too. How do you know we can trust him?"

Allie, surprisingly, is silent. She brings her feet up onto the leather car seat so she can wrap her arms around her knees and look out the window. Harry can see the wheels turning in her head, and he knows there's nothing he can do to stop them.

**

"You know I have to go," Allie says after a while. Dawn is melting into proper morning when they reach Harry's neighborhood again, anxiety still sitting solid in his chest, even though he's sure that no one's followed them all the way out here. She's sitting with her head against the window, eyes turned towards the pale sky.

"You think Cassandra would let you do that?" Harry asks, a lump forming at the base of his throat.

"She doesn't have a say," Allie replies, "because I'm not telling her. I'll go myself first." She straightens up then and turns towards Harry; they're in the driveway now, the rest of the world silent in around them as Harry puts the car into park. "And if it's safe, I'll come back for everyone else, bring them over there, or they all can come here, merge our resources or something."

She's not asking him for permission; that much is clear. There's a quiet determination in her eyes, and Harry's heart clenches in his chest. His reply is cut off by the others coming out to the garage to help them unload.

"How'd it go?" Cassandra asks them. She's on her feet today, but her skin looks ashen. Allie shoots him a sharp look, and he swallows.

"Good," Harry lies, eyes on Allie. "Without a hitch."

Later, Harry retreats to his bedroom with the excuse of wanting to take a nap since they had to get up so early for the raid. Of course, he ends up opening his window and climbing out onto the roof. Maybe for the last time—he has no idea. 

This is the first time he's come up here during the day, though, and looking out over the town like this in the daylight on this quiet September morning, he's struck by how small West Ham really is. If he squints, he can see all the way to the other side of town, denoted by the thick crop of trees and wilderness that pops up where the roads end.

The last joint is still in his pocket in the Altoids tin. He takes it out and plays with it in his hands for a while, waiting for the right moment. It comes when Allie, like he thought she would, makes her appearance, climbing out onto the ledge of the roof with him, sitting with one leg stretched in front of her, the other one bent at the knee.

"Your last one?" she asks when he lights it up and takes a drag, letting the gray smoke blow out and away into the sunshine. "Kinda thought you were saving it for an occasion."

"Maybe this is it," he says, passing it to her. She rolls it around between her fingers for a moment before taking a hit, closing her eyes, really savoring it. She knows just as well as he does that maybe it'll never be like this again. 

Just like always, they pass the joint back and forth in silence. Harry lets the familiar high seep into his blood, flutter across his skin, though this time the buzz in his mind remains the same, thoughts occupied, as they so lately are, with the girl sitting next to him. When the joint is just a burning ember between her fingers, Allie stubs it out against the roof tile and flicks it into the distance, watching its trajectory across the blue sky until it’s too small to see.

"You understand why I have to go, right? And it's safer this way, if I go alone," she says, a soft breeze blowing through her hair. It’s kind of sweet that she’s trying to convince him, even though there’s really no need.

"You won't be alone. I’m coming with you." Harry had known this from the moment he'd seen those wheels turning in her head. "Same car, remember?"

Allie regards him for a moment, face turned towards him, something unreadable and deep in her eyes. And then she reaches an arm out, curls her fingers around his neck, brings him in for a kiss. She tastes like the weed, warm and smokey, sweet in his veins as he puts a hand in her hair and kisses her back. They haven't done this too often, all things considered, even when they sleep together, but it feels familiar. When she pulls away, she takes his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together.

"What was that for?" he asks, dazed, as she smiles down at her knees.

Allie shrugs. "For being there for me, I guess. For being in the same car with me. Thank you."

Harry chuckles, squeezing her hand in his. "Yeah. Anytime."

"I'm serious." She's looking at him head on, the amusement in her eyes giving way to something more somber. "Thank you, Harry. You don't have to come with me if you don't want to."

Harry cracks a little smile at that. "I do want to," he says. And it's true. If she’s going to embark on a crazy solo mission to find Grizz and Sam and the medicine Cassandra needs—and possibly a way to unite at least some of them, form a little society and give them all a better shot at surviving this thing—well, he's certainly not going to let her do it alone.

He's learned this by now: wherever Allie goes, Harry will follow.

**Author's Note:**

> had no idea where this was going when i started it, it was supposed to be a gritty dark kind of vibe but it ended up turning into romance?
> 
> thank you for reading! ♡
> 
> [tumblr](https://dystopians.tumblr.com/) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/harrybinghams)


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